Well the day started well, clear blue sky and just the lightest of breezes. I made a management decision, we would go down to the Chasms and have a picnic on the cliff tops overlooking the Sugarloaf Rock, it had been awhile since I had watched the guillemots nesting on the rocks, and I felt some pictures were long overdue.

Fortunately, the management agreed. Mrs A-B thought this was a wonderful idea. (Mrs Arborybears refers to the facebook page where I’m referred to as Mr Arborybears. Have a look at Arborybears page on facebook)

Parking in the Cregneash car park and wandering through the museum village took us up the hill and over the style onto Manx National Heritage land, it was just a short walk down to the Chasms from here.

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Going through the gate in the stone wall surrounding the Chasms I heard Mrs A-B cry out, “have you read this? it says it is dangerous and to proceed with care”

“Only if you fall down one of the chasms, we are almost there.”

100 meters later we were sat on the cliff top over looking the sugarloaf, and the noise of the birds was incredible. What a place to have lunch, the only people to be seen were in the odd boat that passed 200 feet below.

Choughs were flying around us and calling out whilst the odd kittiwake passed by giving us a curious look. The sky was blue and the sea was a clear blue/green.

“Strange that there are no ravens here I said”, and with that there was a cry and just above are heads were a pair of ravens that proceed to give us a display of courtship before showing me where their nest was on the cliff alongside us.

As usual, everything seemed just a little far a way to photograph, so using an old trick of framing on the sweet spot of the lens, this involves framing in the centre of the lens and stopping down enough,about 2 stops between the maximum and minimum apertures that would give the sharpest results that could be cropped without too much loss of quality.

So this was the first of the day, a ravens nest! More was to follow when we moved along the cliff top. I could hear chicks, but at that point I couldn’t see them. Looking directly down, about 10 meters beneath me, there was quite a few herring gull chicks running around.

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Their fluffy grey bodies with black spots showed no signs of what they would grow into, efficient eating machines that would not think twice of taking a live duckling and swallowing whole. As the parent birds were starting to show a bit of agitation, we moved away and started to return to Cregneash as more and more people were taking advantage of the good weather and were walking the coastal foot path.

In Cregneash village I tried to photograph swallows in flight, not the easiest of things to do because of their speed and size. Each time I put my camera down, they would tease me by flying into wind alongside me and almost slow down to a hover just to fly away again as I picked up the camera. Next time, I will have them. But that will be another story.